Hello all!

Abbie here. As I begin to reflect on these first three months of the year, and my first three months in the role of Executive Director of Collaborative Innovations, I am most aware of how energized I feel by the work we are doing. There are lots of exciting things happening for the CMM Institute, so I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about some of them. And in the spirit of John Stewart, along with this “offering,” I’d also like to extend an “invitation”- what exciting things are you doing with CMM? We would love to know!

Stories Lived. Stories Told.

First, we have entered into the fourth season of our podcast! At the time of writing this, we’ve got almost 19,000 total downloads across all episodes, with people listening in from North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia! Where are you listening in from? So far, three episodes are out- “On Death, Life & Palliative Care with Christiaan Rhodius,” “On the Tenderness Tour with Richard Propes,” and “On Relationality in Regenerative Food Systems with Edona Arnesen.” This year we are releasing episodes every other week in the interest of creating some breathing room between episodes for you to catch up on listening to old episodes, explore some of our other resources, and/ or engage with other learning opportunities outside of our offerings, but most of all to give you time to reflect on the new information you are taking in. There is so much content out there (!)- already much more than we could ever consume- so we’d like to be mindful of what and how much we contribute. This year, many of the conversations explore the intersection of CMM with other, related perspectives like social construction and systems thinking. So, be on the lookout for some great conversation partners coming up!

CosmoActivities

Second, at the beginning of February, we attended the Arizona Association for the Gifted and Talented (AAGT) Annual Conference, where long-time CosmoKidz teacher Amy MacDonald led a breakout session demonstrating how teachers might use CosmoKidz and CosmoTweenz in their classrooms. Kim and I were also able to exhibit at this conference and give away 72 physical copies of CosmoKidz and 72 physical copies of CosmoTweenz. And let me tell you, the teachers we excited! This was a great experience that reaffirmed the value of offering these resources for free, as we were able to see firsthand how much it meant to teachers and how little support many receive in terms of teaching communication skills and perspectives in the classroom.

Out of this opportunity has emerged another! One of the teachers who was intrigued by our resources hosts another, international conference for gifted individuals, educators, therapists, and families, and has invited us to attend that in July. I will represent us there, giving away more free boxes of CosmoKidz and CosmoTweenz and getting to host my own breakout session about using CMM to story experiences of giftedness. In June, we will also attend the Elevate Your Classroom Conference alongside our good friend, and gifted educator, Stephanie Higgs. A pretty strong start to the year!

Another thing to note under the CosmoActivities heading is that CosmoParenting is up and running! Our yearlong podcast is underway and you can subscribe to it here to keep up with the weekly episodes. This has been a collaborative effort in the truest sense of the word! Stephanie Higgs and I took the reins on designing the podcast throughout 2024 and then were joined in conversation by many others- who you will hear on the weekly episodes- to help us explore the diverse and complex experiences of parenting. There is so much to learn from each other in these conversations through the stories that are shared.

Resources

One big thing to note is the publication of Robyn Penman’s book with the CMMi Press- Justice in the Making: Relating, Participating, Communicating- this January! You can order the book here.

Progress continues on the film, What Now?, headed up by Bart Buechner and Terry Strauss- that explores the disconnect between civilians and veterans as we navigate the “Afterwar.” We envision the final product- a short documentary- to be shared in classrooms and in workshops as a means of generating conversation around what we could be (and need to be) making together in order to foster community, understanding, and collective healing.
Through one of our 2024 Fellows, Alastair Pearson, we have connected with the Institute for Family Therapy’s SAFE (Systemic Action for Education) Community of Practice. Kim Pearce and I presented during a virtual gathering earlier this month. We plan to co-host a follow up conversation in the summer and will post any updates on our LinkedIn.

We continue to ask ourselves what is needed in the world and what CMM has to say, which is fueling ongoing conversations of creating resources that better educate about CMM and better engage potential practitioners in our community. Any further resources we create will be accessible on our Substack, and any workshops or events that emerge will be posted on our LinkedIn.

Please consider all of this an invitation to be in conversation together! If you have ideas, projects of your own, or questions, I am interested in further exploring other opportunities for what we can co-create together.

Keep Creating Mindful Moments!

Abbie